Humorous Texts

This book presents a theory of long humorous texts based on a revision and an upgrade of the General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH), a decade after its first proposal. The theory is informed by current research in psycholinguistics and cognitive science. It is predicated on the fact that there are humorous mechanisms in long texts that have no counterpart in jokes. The book includes a number of case studies, among them Oscar Wilde's Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Allais' story Han Rybeck. A ground-breaking discussion of the quantitative distribution of humor in select texts is presented.

Preface

vii

A cautionary tale

vii

Acknowledgments

ix

Publications

ix

People

x

Preliminaries

1

(36)

The SSTH

1

(8)

The SSTH's Main Hypothesis

1

(1)

Scripts

2

(7)

The Structure of a Semantic Theory

9

(8)

Formal Semantic Analysis

9

(6)

Inferential Explosion

15

(1)

Is this a formal analysis?

16

(1)

The Semantic Theory of Humor

17

(5)

Overlapping

17

(1)

Oppositeness

18

(3)

The Doctor's Wife Joke

21

(1)

The GTVH

22

(1)

Language (LA)

22

(1)

Narrative Strategy (NS)

23

(1)

Target (TA)

23

(1)

Situation (SI)

24

(1)

Logical Mechanism (LM)

25

(1)

The KRs: Script Opposition (SO)

26

(1)

The Joke, According to the GTVH

27

(1)

Outline of the Theory

28

(2)

Methodological and metatheoretical issues

30

(7)

Competence, not performance

30

(2)

Semiotics, Text, Narrative

32

(1)

The role of intuition in humor research

33

(4)

Literature Review

37

(10)

The Expansionist Approach

37

(4)

Chlopicki

38

(1)

Kolek

39

(2)

The Revisionist Approach

41

(6)

Holcomb

41

(1)

Wenzel

42

(2)

Palmer

44

(1)

A digression: Jolles on jokes

45

(2)

Semantic Analysis and Humor Analysis

47

(14)

Semantic and Pragmatic Tools

47

(7)

Storage Area

47

(1)

Contents of the Storage Area

48

(5)

Scripts

53

(1)

How is information added to the storage area?

54

(3)

The Text World

57

(1)

Surface structure recall

58

(1)

Summing up

59

(2)

Beyond the Joke

61

(18)

Narrative vs. Conversation

61

(8)

Stand-up routines

62

(3)

Joke telling contests

65

(1)

Conversation

66

(3)

Joke cycles

69

(9)

Definition of Joke Cycle

69

(1)

A little history

70

(1)

Two generations of jokes

70

(8)

Recapitulation

78

(1)

Conclusion

78

(1)

A Theory of Humorous Texts

79

(24)

Method of analysis

79

(1)

Narratives

79

(3)

Lines and their Configurations

82

(6)

Jab lines

82

(1)

Punch lines

83

(1)

Strands

83

(2)

Repetition

85

(1)

Stacks

86

(1)

Intertextual jokes

87

(1)

Bridges and Combs

87

(1)

A typology of line position

88

(4)

No line

88

(1)

Final punch line

89

(1)

Episodic

90

(1)

Mere sequence of jab lines with final punch line

91

(1)

Bathtub placement

91

(1)

Humorous Plots

92

(7)

Narratives Structurally Similar to Jokes

92

(2)

Metanarrative Plots

94

(3)

Plots with Humorous Fabulae

97

(1)

Plots with Serious Fabulae

98

(1)

Humorous disruption and realistic illusion

98

(1)

Humorous Techniques

99

(2)

Coincidences

99

(1)

Hyperdetermined

100

(1)

General Considerations

101

(2)

Diffuse Disjunction

103

(24)

Discrete or diffuse disjunctors

103

(1)

Register humor

104

(6)

Literature Review

104

(2)

Register Humor in T. L. Peacock

106

(4)

Irony

110

(17)

Principle of least disruption

112

(2)

A contextual-appropriateness theory of irony

114

(5)

Reasons for using irony

119

(3)

Irony and Humor

122

(1)

A Passage from Voltaire's Candide

123

(4)

Case Studies

127

(36)

Chuckles Bites the Dust: the opening sequence

128

(6)

Sexton's Cinderella

134

(8)

Graphs

139

(2)

Stacks

141

(1)

A Merry Discourse of Meum and Tuum

142

(6)

Il nome della rosa: Analysis of one strand

148

(2)

A text with more than one model reader

149

(1)

A Serious Novel with a Humor Strand

149

(1)

Han Rybeck ou le coup de l'etrier

150

(13)

Overall Analysis

151

(4)

Schematic representation of HRCI

155

(2)

The text of Han Rybeck ou le coup de l'etrier

157

(3)

English Translation of HRCI

160

(3)

``Lord Arthur Savile's Crime'' by Oscar Wilde

163

(40)

Chapter I

163

(11)

Chapter II

174

(2)

Chapter III

176

(9)

Chapter IV

185

(3)

Chapter V

188

(11)

Chapter VI

199

(4)

Further Perspectives

203

(6)

A quantitative look at LASC

203

(3)

General Conclusions

206

(1)

Limitations of the Model

207

(2)

Primary Sources

209

(2)

Works Cited

211

(15)

Index

226

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Summary

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials